Latest update fixes it, yeah. Looks great. Lower-case g's still sometimes cut off a bit though. (Visible on the "connecting to steam account" dialog box when you first open steam and "Downloading" above the bandwidth graph on the downloads screen)

Hi TDD, looks really good, I like that you fixed the bugs. I do however have a suggestion for you though dude. On the progress bars that appear when you either tell steam to install something or when it says "Updating Platform Files" the progress bars never show up like they are almost invisible. I think that you should try to add a color to that to match your theme. Maybe a white color like the gradient on the top of the Steam UI. Just a suggestion dude. Keep up the hard work.

Hi TDD, looks really good, I like that you fixed the bugs. I do however have a suggestion for you though dude. On the progress bars that appear when you either tell steam to install something or when it says "Updating Platform Files" the progress bars never show up like they are almost invisible. I think that you should try to add a color to that to match your theme. Maybe a white color like the gradient on the top of the Steam UI. Just a suggestion dude. Keep up the hard work.

I'll try to fix the progress bar issue, but in regards to its design, the way it is colored is via a solid font color, so I cannot add the effects I wanted to, such as a slight gradient on them.

I'll try to fix the progress bar issue, but in regards to its design, the way it is colored is via a solid font color, so I cannot add the effects I wanted to, such as a slight gradient on them.

That kinda sux. Maybe you could make it a whitish gray kinda like the gradient color on top only without the gradient. If I could I would help but I do not have the slightest idea as to how to make these lol. )

I'll try to fix the progress bar issue, but in regards to its design, the way it is colored is via a solid font color, so I cannot add the effects I wanted to, such as a slight gradient on them.

Actually, you can. I made a skin for the V3 system that had gradients. You have to use a TGA to create the gradient and overlay that on top of the progress bars. You can take it a step further and round the corners on each bar off, or outline them, etc., if you make a TGA the correct size and have it tiled across the progress bar.

As for the skin, I am pretty sure this is the best skin we have seen for the new UI. Granted we are still quite limited due to Valve not implementing some features in a way that makes them accessible to custom skins, but I am sure once the new UI is out of beta we will start seeing some very original skins.

I am still undecided if I will be making new skins for the new UI once it is out of beta. I would really like to do a L4D2 skin and a TF2 skin, but I am not looking forward to learning how to skin the new system. That said, if you run into any issues, I may be able to help, if you want, since I have worked with the old system for several years.

Suggestions/Criticisms:
- I agree that the stripes on the top of windows are too bright; the opacity -ALX- had in his mockup(s) was much more fitting.

- I would have liked to see a background color behind the scroll bars, mostly to help separate the games list from the game description pane on the details view. Perhaps just a simple black color at 20%-50% opacity would be fine.

- You moved the loading throbber on the store page, but it still sticks out a pixel or two, so you can see it flash in the lower left corner very briefly. I am not sure removing it entirely was a good idea, as progress indicators are usually very useful.

- The gradient behind the active/hovered feels out of place, as that is the only horizontal gradient I can see. That, and since it is a lighter color than the background, but in the games list and in menus you use a darker background for hovered/active items, you have created some unnecessary inconsistencies.

- The menu text (i.e. Steam, View, Friends, etc.) should not lose the text shadow when hovered over

Actually, you can. I made a skin for the V3 system that had gradients. You have to use a TGA to create the gradient and overlay that on top of the progress bars. You can take it a step further and round the corners on each bar off, or outline them, etc., if you make a TGA the correct size and have it tiled across the progress bar.

Thanks, I'll give this a shot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

As for the skin, I am pretty sure this is the best skin we have seen for the new UI. Granted we are still quite limited due to Valve not implementing some features in a way that makes them accessible to custom skins, but I am sure once the new UI is out of beta we will start seeing some very original skins.

Thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

Suggestions/Criticisms:
- I agree that the stripes on the top of windows are too bright; the opacity -ALX- had in his mockup(s) was much more fitting.

Fair enough, it's been noted before, enough people have mentioned this so I guess I'll change that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

- I would have liked to see a background color behind the scroll bars, mostly to help separate the games list from the game description pane on the details view. Perhaps just a simple black color at 20%-50% opacity would be fine.

I don't want to do that, the only place that does occur is on webpanels, such as the store view, and whatnot, but that was to fix a strange bug.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

- You moved the loading throbber on the store page, but it still sticks out a pixel or two, so you can see it flash in the lower left corner very briefly. I am not sure removing it entirely was a good idea, as progress indicators are usually very useful.

This was, unfortunately, a silly idea I had at around 1:30am the night I wanted to release this skin, because I couldn't locate the actual images used for the throbber, so I tried to half-♥♥♥♥ remove it. I'll try to locate and adjust the progress throbber.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

- The gradient behind the active/hovered feels out of place, as that is the only horizontal gradient I can see. That, and since it is a lighter color than the background, but in the games list and in menus you use a darker background for hovered/active items, you have created some unnecessary inconsistencies.

Could you provide some screenshots pointing out what specifically you are referring to, I'm having difficulty understanding what it is exactly you're talking about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evil Incarnate

- The menu text (i.e. Steam, View, Friends, etc.) should not lose the text shadow when hovered over

[/quote]
It actually doesn't, it has a white outer glow on hover, I just need to make it more noticeable, as an update the other day drastically changed the rendering of outer glows, before it the glow was much brighter.

FYI, about the font glow affect, we actually haven't changed how it is rendered recently. We may have tweaked the parameters for the effect in uinavigatorpanel.layout though. You have full control there as a skinner.

Here is what the parameters mean:

font-outerglow-color=Color -- The color of the effect, kind of an obvious one.

font-outerglow-offset=1 -- The number of pixels to offset the text before blurring. The way the glow works is we draw the text four times offset in the positive and negative x/y directions by this value. We then blur it.

font-outerglow-filtersize=5 -- The size of the kernel for the lowpass filter we use to do the blurring, 5 essentially means that when blurring we average the values of the pixels in a 5x5 square around the target pixel to compute it's resulting value.

So, you can increase the size/intensity of the glow by tweaking the offset and filtersize parameter. I wouldn't go above 7 with the filter-size parameter or you may start to hurt performance a bit, doing the averaging for every pixel can be expensive if the values get too big.

He is talking about the hover effect in the Friends list, when you put your mouse over a friend. Everywhere else in the skin, buttons are beveled and filled with a vertical gradient...

Also, the Friends list needs increased spacing between the friend's name, status and game label. Also, make "My Control Panel" the same size as the status and game.

Talking about font size. 12px is too small for the status and game. Make the name 15px (or 16px), and the "My Control Panel", staus and game label 13px.

Thanks for explaining it to me. I'll fix that up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmccaskey

This is a nice looking skin.

FYI, about the font glow affect, we actually haven't changed how it is rendered recently. We may have tweaked the parameters for the effect in uinavigatorpanel.layout though. You have full control there as a skinner.

Here is what the parameters mean:

font-outerglow-color=Color -- The color of the effect, kind of an obvious one.

font-outerglow-offset=1 -- The number of pixels to offset the text before blurring. The way the glow works is we draw the text four times offset in the positive and negative x/y directions by this value. We then blur it.

font-outerglow-filtersize=5 -- The size of the kernel for the lowpass filter we use to do the blurring, 5 essentially means that when blurring we average the values of the pixels in a 5x5 square around the target pixel to compute it's resulting value.

So, you can increase the size/intensity of the glow by tweaking the offset and filtersize parameter. I wouldn't go above 7 with the filter-size parameter or you may start to hurt performance a bit, doing the averaging for every pixel can be expensive if the values get too big.

Are you sure? In the last update, all the dark glows were a lot less visible, previous to it I was unable to use a color close to black as it'd not blur properly, but since the update I can get to around "3 3 3 255" before it does.

Also, if you want to use it, or any part of it in the default steam skin, I don't mind

Quote:

Originally Posted by ngwoo

With this skin I'm now getting 30% CPU usage when Steam is set to the details pane...

With this skin I'm now getting 30% CPU usage when Steam is set to the details pane...

Not reproducible with default skin.

using an ati card by any chance? I do get some cpu usage too sometimes in the details view when idle(still this skin is faster in this view then the default one.), I usually use the list view as it's the fastest.

The 10.3 ati drivers should be out in a couple days, hopefully they fixed the 2d acceleration problem in those.

Right now? 0% with the default skin on the details pane. I switched back to yours to troubleshoot and sure enough, constant 30% CPU usage. Makes actually using the PC impossible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cartman-2000

using an ati card by any chance? I do get some cpu usage too sometimes in the details view when idle(still this skin is faster in this view then the default one.), I usually use the list view as it's the fastest.

The 10.3 ati drivers should be out in a couple days, hopefully they fixed the 2d acceleration problem in those.

GTX 260 actually. I'm on the latest beta drivers, but it can't be that because the issue started at a seemingly random time. Absolutely nothing changed. (The only possibility is some kind of steam update that wasn't announced)

I to have noticed the jump in the CPU usage. Mine runs at 25% on the detailed page with Windows 7 x64. IDK why though unless for some reason it needs to process more for that page and gets caught in an infinate loop with the process thread. IDK why though, probably just another bug lol